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Vishal Naik

AMA: Google Developer Marketing Lead, Google Assistant, Vishal Naik on Platform Product Marketing

January 25 @ 10:00AM PST
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Google Developer Marketing Lead, Google Assistant, Vishal Naik on Platform Product Marketing
Top Questions
Vishal Naik
Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing LeadJanuary 25
In my opinion, the most important thing in prioritizing your messaging is finding the common denominator across your platform. Does it create a new output, or solve a new problem, or enable a new style of working, for example. Then you prioritize that in your messaging hierarchy, and use the vari......Read More
1612 Views
9 requests
Vishal Naik
Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing LeadJanuary 25
I'm big on analogies (perhaps annoyingly so), so equate it to a concert: The Portfolio or Suite is like the band. It's the grouping of the products that you sell/come to see. The Ecosystem is like TicketMaster or StubHub. It's how you gain access to see the band/use the product if you're not walk......Read More
2058 Views
2 requests
How can I start making a change in my organization to influence the roadmap based on consumer insights?
I am at a company where Product builds the roadmap without many insights from Marketing or research.
Vishal Naik
Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing LeadJanuary 25
An Engineering leader at a previous company described this to me as a tripod--decisions made based on the intersection of PM, Eng and PMM. Here PMM is representing the customer, and to an effect, also Sales opportunities. In an ideal state, you'd have this. When you don't, you'll need to understa......Read More
759 Views
3 requests
Vishal Naik
Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing LeadJanuary 25
Market research is a pretty valuable data point in terms of prioritizing verticals (or any other segmentation slice), but so too is your product ownership point of view and your internal usage data. So you don't need to lean on external research, but it can certainly augment your other efforts. I......Read More
1048 Views
2 requests
How is your Product Marketing team structured?
By product line, segment, function or by objective (ie. revenue retention, product engagement, etc?
Vishal Naik
Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing LeadJanuary 24
At DocuSign, there are product marketers across our main product categories, as well as industry and audience teams. Every company I've ever worked at has grouped their teams differently, so I tend to consider new roles based on mapping skills to company needs. If the largest TAM is in a vertical......Read More
846 Views
5 requests
Vishal Naik
Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing LeadJanuary 25
The biggest thing I consider is that the messaging created is about the customer and what they are thinking/feeling/experiencing. Rather than what we are building and what we are selling. I've kept a messaging template from a previous org where we focused on market context, customer pain points,......Read More
788 Views
4 requests
Vishal Naik
Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing LeadJanuary 25
When selling a platform, you're selling what a customer can accomplish, less what a customer is buying. Obviously in the SaaS world, a lot of our marketing is based on the product being the thing that gets a customer to a desired future state, but that's even more true when selling a platform. T......Read More
865 Views
5 requests
Vishal Naik
Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing LeadJanuary 25
Great question. To be frank, even for companies with a reputation of being open and extensible, this one is always a challenge when you're in a Platform role. Because at the end of the day, the Platform is less about what products your company creates and more about what a customer can do. Thus y......Read More
807 Views
1 request
Vishal Naik
Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing LeadJanuary 25
I view the role of a PMM as being someone who owns the full story/customer perception of a product, is the product-line CMO so to speak. Sometimes you will need to market a solution, sometimes you will need to launch a product, sometimes you will need to convince sales people to do something and ......Read More
1151 Views
4 requests
Vishal Naik
Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing LeadJanuary 25
Answering this based on the context of the question being asked from the POV of a CRM vendor looking to scale: The biggest challenge I've come across is attribution. The framework to drive consistent lead generation really focuses on the mediums, but any marketer is going to test and optimize bas......Read More
772 Views
4 requests